


the devil bites dirty

by bonehouses



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Imperial Russia, F/M, Reylo - Freeform, St. Petersburg, rating change to come, some unholy combination of Russian lit and SW canon/EU, truly who is to say
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-09 19:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17413043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonehouses/pseuds/bonehouses
Summary: In which Rey has no where to go but St. Petersburg, and cannot keep a pair of dark eyes out of her head.





	the devil bites dirty

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here we are - a deeply-embarrassing 19th century Russian AU that no one asked for except for my own dumb brain! It’s kind of an unholy combination of Russian lit and Star Wars canon/EU, I guess, or at least that’s my intention at the moment. If I’m making any glaringly-obvious historical or SW-related mistakes, please let me know!! Additionally, this is unbeta’d, so I apologize for any abrupt switches in tense or weird grammatical errors. I think I got all of them, but please let me know if you spot one! The title comes from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGPIFCTAugk) by Cocteau Twins. This is my first foray into the Star Wars fandom as more than a lurker, so I hope that you enjoy the fic.

_**1865** _

**_Achto Monastery, in the White Sea_ **

_**Russia** _

She had never known such solitude as she sometimes felt in the middle of the night on Achto. The island was spare and silent, and the wind, tonight, did not blow with enough intensity to do anything more than gently sway the bare trees in the courtyard. With her eyes closed all that she could hear was the sound of her own slow breathing, uneven now that she had turned her mind to it. A shiver passed through her body. Even this far north, the season had slowly begun to turn, the ice encircling the island melting more with each passing day. But by her estimation, the weather was still freezing. Soon they would be able to take the boats out on the water again, however, which was something to look forward to. The coming season would mark her third year on the island. Rey knew that one day soon she would blink and realize that summer had arrived. 

She took a deep, bracing breath. _No matter how long I live here, I’ll never get used to this kriffing cold._

*

It was dawn when she woke again.

She could hear the quiet bustle of the nuns as they went about their morning work. Rey’s days did not follow the same regimented rhythm, but she also rose at dawn, when it was easiest for her to meditate in the stern little chapel across the courtyard from her cell. This little island in the middle of the White Sea was a nexus of the Force, but Rey sometimes questioned the wisdom of her choice to come here. Being so far north, the days were short and harsh, and she had no company other than taciturn Master Luke. There were days when she didn’t speak to another living soul, which often suited her just fine - the nuns communicated everything they wanted to through hateful glares alone, and the mournful, penitent Luke was prone to long stretches of silence punctuated by an occasional grunt. After she had come to him - rudderless but filled with purpose, splintering in her solitude - he had agreed to teach her only after she camped out in an unused shed for several weeks. She had had nowhere else in the known world to go. When she had seen him passing through her village, on some pilgrimage going Force knows where, she had felt an instinctual pull. _This man is like me_ , she had thought. _This man will tell me why I am like this. This man will tell me who I am_. By this time she was free. The Tsar had decreed it so, but still she had stayed, trading ever-dwindling sable for grain from Unkar Plutt. She had followed Luke after deliberating for a week, deciding, with a curious mix of hope and despair, that she had nothing else to lose. 

Now, three years later, here she was, bundled in fur and linen, trying desperately to ignore the sounds of life stirring beyond the cold stone walls of her cell. She buried her face deeper into the folds of her blanket, trying to warm her nose and keeping her eyes adamantly closed. Soon, she knew, she would have to get up and trundle over to the chapel, lighting the prayer candles under the glimmering icon of Master Yoda as she attempted to channel a sense of peace. But something felt… off. Whereas she usually felt only a monotonous tranquility, a dependable _thrum_ in the sense of the Force on the island, it seemed to hum at a different tone this morning. That, or another, deeper, flatter tone had been added to the usual chorus - something quiet, but identifiably there. A knot formed in Rey’s stomach.

She got out of bed, quickly, tripping over her worn valenki at the edge of her bed in her rush to change out of her nightgown. As always, she put on the same simple outfit - black sarafan over a brown linen dress, valenki, her headscarf, and the old shuba Luke had given her the first winter she moved here. It was too large for her, and brushed the ground as she moved, but it was the warmest garment she had ever owned. Flinging the door open, she nearly ran headlong into one of the nuns, an arms-length away from knocking on her door.

“It’s about time you were up,” she said, tutting at Rey with the same weary disapproval they all seemed to have for her. “I thought you would have felt it hours ago.”

Rey swallowed a lump in her throat. “What do you mean?”

“Master Luke is dying,” she said. The admission was stark and blunt, but the nun wore a sympathetic look on her face. “He knew you would come to him when you felt that he was leaving. He wishes to speak -”

But Rey was already running, pushing past the nun and sprinting across the island to Luke’s isolated hut. _He can’t be dying_ , she thinks. But another part of her thinks - _But you have already felt it. You know it to be true._ _And now he will leave you as well_.

*

Luke was too weak to speak when Rey arrived at his hut. Whatever was taking him seemed to have struck quickly. She sat with him for hours, attempting to feed him even as he rejected her help. He was delirious, being pulled into whatever it was that lay beyond. The room smelled heavily of incense and tallow. Luke himself was sour and sticky with sweat. It was evening before he spoke.

“Rey,” he rasped. “You know of my sister in Petersburg, correct?”

Confused, Rey shook her head. “No, I don’t. I didn’t even know that you had a sister.”

Luke laughed - it came out like a rasp of smoke, inconsequential and rough. “I suppose I never did tell you much about myself,” he said wryly. “But I do. Her name is Leia. She is - very different than I am, but I suppose in some essential ways we are the same,” he said. His speech was painfully slow. Luke turned to look at Rey, and Rey found that he still had that fire in his eye, set back in his skull and suffusing his face with warmth, although it had now become dim. “I do not know how long I am for this earth, Rey. I - I wrote to my sister several months ago, when I felt -”

He breaks off, coughing, drawing in a long breath. Rey felt a tear slide down her cheek. “I wrote to her to come for you, now that I will be gone. You do not have to go with her, Rey, but… this is not a life for you here.”

Rey frowned, but soon tried to fix her expression, as she thought it would not do to scowl at a dying man. “I feel at home here, Master Luke,” she said. She was crying in earnest now. Big, fat, silent tears rolled down her cold cheeks, wetting the fur of Luke’s old coat. Her breath was coming fast, some unknown combination of emotions roiling in her chest.

“This country is vast, Rey. If you tried for your whole life you would not see it all. I am an old man, and I have seen many things - and that is how I found myself here alone,” he said. “But you are young, Rey, and full of light.”

“Master -”

“Rey, hear me out. I imagine this will be the last favor you do for me,” Luke said. He was smiling gently, his face having taken on the waxy look of the dead, but now more than ever he looked like a holy man. Smiling even in the face of death, or perhaps in spite of it, here at the end of the world. “I know that you came to Achto for me. I can tell that you chafe in this place. Please, go with Leia. There is no need to stay long, but she will provide for you. I have asked for her to take you in as her ward.”

Rey nodded, feeling numb. “When will she arrive?”

“I am unsure,” Luke said. “But I know that by the time she is here I will be dead.”

Rey took a deep breath. The warm air of the cabin, hot as the breath of her dying master, filled her lungs with smoke and miasma. “All right, Master Luke. I’ll go with her. I promise.”

At this Luke looked content. He closed his eyes once more. Rey took his hand, and wept.

*

Rey sat with Master Luke for two days more. Every few hours, he would speak, though not to her - to Master Yoda, to his sister, to shades of his past. Even as the life left his body, she felt the stirrings of the Force as though it was preparing for him to arrive. She took neither food nor water during her vigil, and none was offered. 

He died early in the morning on the third day. The sun had yet to rise. Rey felt, with a startling new clarity, the moment that the soul left the house of his body. A moment later, he was gone. She was utterly alone.

She stayed in his hut for one hour more, staring at the space his body had just been. Rey had seen death before, but it had always left a body behind. His robes were empty on the pallet. She reached out, bringing them to her face as she wept. With the robes gone, she could see that his weight had left an indentation in the bed, an indication that he had once been solid and real. She stared at the dark spots of sweat he had left on the linen as they disappeared. When they were gone, it was as if he had never existed.

One of the nuns came to get her at the break of day. “There is no cause to grieve, girl,” she said. “He is one with the Force. We should all be so lucky one day.” Anger stirred in Rey’s chest, sharp and strong. 

“I can’t help it,” she said, her voice breaking. “I love him.”

The nun _tsk_ ed. “Love of mortal things is folly, my child,” she sighed. “Now you have learned.”

*

The next several weeks passed in a blur. Rey was numb, preferring to stay silent lest she say something she would regret. With Luke gone there was little for her to do other than meditate and pray. She stayed in the chapel most nights, watching the candles as they flickered, sleeping only fitfully on the cold floor. During the day she joined the sisters in their prayers. She found no comfort in her routine. 

But there was something beyond her grief as well. She was hearing the whispers again, in the back of her skull. They were as familiar as her own thoughts, though she could never make out what they said. The whispers were like a chorus of the same voice. They came to her on these cold nights, sometimes, with strange dreams which fled her mind once she had woken up. Often she saw a man, dressed in black with hair as dark as soot, but she had never seen his face. Or perhaps she had seen it, and something has compelled her to forget. 

Sometimes she would glimpse moments from a life not her own, though she could never tell if it was only her imagination. Back in the days before she had come to Achto, these whispers - this creature, this man, whomever he was - had kept her company as she tried to sleep. When she had told Luke of the voice, she had been afraid that he would think it was merely own her mind playing tricks, but a look of deep concern had crossed his face. “Go meditate on the shore and I will come to you soon,” he had told her. He taught her to keep the voice out. It had stayed away for years, though if she were being honest she would admit that she missed… whomever it was who had visited her. Now, as the voices swam in and out of her mind, slipping and flashing like fish in the sun, she wondered why they had come back. Had she allowed them back, in her grief? Did this person hear her voice too?

And now all that she could do was wait. Would Leia come, as Luke said she would? Had she even received his letter? Did she even want Rey? All Rey knew was that Leia lived in St. Petersburg. Luke had shown Rey a map, once, of all of Russia, with printed illustrations of Petersburg, and Moscow, and a drawing of the Tsar. She knew that Petersburg was far away from Achto - how far away, she could not be sure, but Achto had been almost at the top of the map. The Tsar and his family lived in Petersburg, and they had certainly never been to Achto. Was Leia wealthy? Was she royal? Perhaps Luke had been wealthy too, once - his old shuba, gifted to her so casually, was the nicest thing Rey had ever seen in her life. 

Rey took a breath to calm her racing thoughts. It would likely take Leia some time to reach the island, if she was coming at all. The ice had finally begun to break up - Rey could hear it groaning and cracking at all hours of the day. Even with the ice broken, it would likely be difficult to reach them by boat. For some time, Rey continued thinking in this manner, her thoughts circling around and around as she bored a hole in an icon of Mace Windu with her gaze. When she next left the chapel, the sun had set and the wind whipped around her ankles. The full moon was over the island. As she trudged back to her cell, the air carried the smell of burning wood and the thawing sea. That night, she slept in her own bed for the first time in weeks. She dreamt of stone streets, and pain, and a pair of plaintive, cruel, dark eyes.

 

*

The very next day a man from the mainland arrived to the island.

He came bearing grain, salt, and meat, mostly, as well wool and other things that they could not make on the island. She was going about her chores as he approached her. 

“A letter for you, girl,” he grunted. Rey had never gotten a letter in her life, and she could think of only one person who would send her one now. Rey’s heart started beating faster as she felt the thick parchment of the letter. It was sealed with a richly-colored wax, and addressed to her in the darkest ink she had ever seen. She nodded at the man, who was obviously curious, but he stepped away and went about delivering the rest of the goods. Rey hurried back to her cell.

The letter was addressed simply to “Rey, novitiate, Achto Monastery, Achto Island, Russian Empire.” Rey found that her hands were shaking as she went to break the seal keeping it closed. She swallowed thickly as she began to read.

_29 March, 1865_

_My dear Rey,_

_By the time that this letter reaches you, I am sure that my brother will have passed. I received his letter several days ago. He is a good man, although, as I am sure you know as well as I, an odd one; I do not mean to speak askance of the dead, I assure you, but we shall have time enough to reminisce when we meet. I will be leaving as soon as I am able - likely one day hence from the posting of this letter - and I shall make haste to collect you. If my brother did not think to tell you, I will tell you now: he has left you a considerable sum of money, which you will possess once you have arrived in Petersburg. Provided that this letter reaches you with any degree of speed, I wish to meet you at the train station in Kem on the 15th of April - if you are not there when I arrive, I shall proceed directly to the island. Please feel free to pack anything you wish. Once we arrive in Petersburg, you shall live with me._

_I look forward to our meeting, Rey, and I am certain that I shall love you as my brother did._

_Kindest regards,_

_Princess Leia Bailovna Organa_

Rey sat down with a _thud_ on her bed. She… _what?_ She re-read the letter, adrenaline coursing through her body. Without even feeling herself move, she sprang up and ran out of her cell. She grabbed the shoulder of the first nun that she saw.

“Do you know the date? Of today, I mean,” Rey asked, breathing hard. The nun wrenched her shoulder from Rey’s grasp.

“It’s the 14th of April,” replied the startled nun.

Rey nodded at her, replying with a quick “Thank you,” before taking off in search of the man who brought her the letter. 

This meant that she would need to leave _right away_ , if she was to meet up with Leia and leave as soon as possible. Thoughts seemed to come at Rey from every which direction. She’d never been on a train before - would she feel herself hurtling through space when she was inside of it? There was very little that she owned at all, and even less that she would want to bring, so packing did not pose much of a problem. Would there be food on the train? Would Leia think her a fool? It was as though all of the feelings that seemed to leave her at the moment of Luke’s death had come flooding back all at once, and were changing rapidly enough to account for their long absence. Rey spotted the man from the boat, who was sitting on a large rock to eat his meal, and skidded to a halt in front of him.

“I need you to take me to Kem,” she said quickly. The man stared at her, eyes wide. “I don’t have any money to give you now, but I might be able to pay you when I get there, I think. I need to get to the train station by tomorrow.”

The man kept staring at her, chewing slowly. Finally, he nodded. “I’ll take you to Kem. Be ready before the bell chimes for sixth hour,” he grumbled. 

Rey smiled at him and ran off to pack her meager belongings. Time seemed to slow down and speed up all at once as she tore through her cell. Soon, seemingly without any conscious thought, she had bid a hasty farewell to the nuns, taken some bread, and then she was crouching in the man’s boat, clutching a sack filled with linen and fur. Luke’s psalter and an icon were her only two items of value - she had wrapped them in one of her summer dresses. They lay now at the bottom of the bag.

The man, who had introduced himself to her as Afanasy Pavlovich, fixed her with an appraising gaze as they left Prosperity Bay. “Must have been some letter, huh?”

“Yes, it was,” Rey said, remembering both the contents of the letter and the eyes from her dream all at once, and then she promptly threw up over the side of the boat.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m imagining that Rey was a serf, and was tied to land owned by Unkar Plutt. After the [Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_reform_of_1861), she left to follow Luke.
> 
> Achto Monastery is based on a real monastery, [Solovetsky Monastery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solovetsky_Monastery), which is on an island in the White Sea. The bay that the monastery sits on is actually called Prosperity Bay! 
> 
> I know that the Kirov Railway from Murmansk to St. Petersburg wasn’t built until the 20th century… but let’s just pretend lol. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> [Valenki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valenki) are felt winter boots. 
> 
> A [sarafan](http://www.russianfashionblog.com/index.php/2013/07/history-sarafan/#axzz5Pmn8qrnD) is a pinafore-type dress that used to be common among Russian women (especially peasants, after Peter the Great mandated European-style dress at court). 
> 
> A shuba is a fur coat. I imagined Rey wearing one that looked similar to [this one](https://russiapedia.rt.com/files/of-russian-origin/shuba/shuba_3-t.JPG).
> 
> [Sixth hour](https://orthodoxwiki.org/Hours) corresponds to about noon in the Orthodox daily prayer cycle.


End file.
